The Renaissance Ideal differed slightly from the “Polymath” in that it involved more than just intellectual advancement. Historically (roughly 1450-1600) it represented a person who endeavored to “develop his capacities as fully as possible” (Britannica, “Renaissance Man”) both mentally and physically. Being an accomplished athlete was considered integral and not separate from education and learning of the highest order. Example: Leon Battista Alberti, who was an architect, painter, poet, scientist, mathematician, inventor, sculptor, and also a skilled horseman and archer.¹

It seems like everyone is a specialist and when someone does claim that they can do many things well it’s hard to not think that they must not be amazing at one of them. I think the most common answer to why we aren’t polymaths these days is that we don’t have the time. Our day-to-day pace is so fast now that can’t really tell one week from the next. In the world of technology especially, release times are getting much shorter, and I think it is something that is irreversible. Try telling a client that instead of the six week time line, you are going to double that and that they won’t get any thing extra you are just slowing down your pace. I don’t think they will take kindly.

I want to take a step back from my day-to-day cycle and do something “for the art of it”. Probably with something I know nothing about, like physical computing, or woodworking. Something that inspires the craft in me to take my time and do something awesome. It might take me six months, or a year, maybe two years. Pulling myself out of what I am comfortable with helps me gain new perspective on the stuff I am comfortable with. Maybe when I am done with that, I will draw up a complete architectural drawing of my ideal house. Some may see this as time wasted, but I see doing the same thing over and over is time wasted.

My challenge to you (the three or four of you that read this), is to put your usual aside and be a novice in something you think is interesting, but have never done.

fn1:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath

One of the most difficult things to do as a person who makes things (websites, art, logos, applications, bird houses) is putting your project out for the world. It is hard because it is never quite where you want it to be, and you don’t want people to think you’re a hack.

Anonymity

No one has to know that it is you who made created project x. Pseudonyms have been around forever, authors use them all the time. It’s no big deal, half the time people are more interested in the work than who actually created it. So worse comes to worse you stay anonymous.

Feedback

I think one of the best ways to improve a project is to get constructive feedback and critiques. The early you get used to receiving feedback the easier it will get. It will also help you build confidence in what you do because a lot of your feedback will be positive. It’s a great deal in my opinion, the negative feedback you use to improve your project and the positive feedback will build your confidence.

Recognition

How are people supposed to notice you if you keep everything private? The more public you are about your work the more likely you are to be recognized. It will also open a bunch of opportunities for you. You could win an award, or land your dream job. One of the reasons that I started this blog was to open up a channel into my thoughts and opinions for the public.

Outside Involvement

If you are looking for participation on your project publicly releasing it is a great way to attract fellow enthusiasts. This also ties in some of the previous topics. When your little project grows into a community driven project, you will definitely be happy to be the source of all of the recognition.

Unfinished? No problem.

Even if your project isn’t completed. You can always put it out there as something that is in “beta”, or a “work in progress”. This helps if you are stuck somewhere or don’t know which direction you want to take your project in. There are plenty of people in every industry that will be willing to give you feedback if you ask for it.

Conclusion

If you are new to something, you get it out there, and it doesn’t go as well as planned. No big deal, it will just be an indicator of progress next time you release something. Experts in their fields have tons of early work that is laughable to them now.

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” — Neils Bohr

I thought it would be fun for me to do a critique of a website that I found in a “review my site” forum. I didn’t pick this site for any reason in particular, and I don’t personally know the designer/developer. I am going to try and do these semi-regularly to keep myself sharp, and to provide constructive feedback to those looking for reviews.

Site Introduction

The website I found to critique is http://www.townofgrandfallswindsor.com/. I found the site in the “Review My Work” category of the Freelance Switch forum. link

Standards

The first thing I always check when critiquing a website is standards validation. I don’t necessarily care what standard the designer chose to use, but I hold web standards in high regard. I go right to the W3 Validator to validate the site. The designer in this case chose XHTML 1.0 Strict, a fine choice. The site does not validate as of today, with one error, “there is no attribute “target”". In all of the “strict” specifications there is not an attribute of “target”. However, in XHTML 1.0 Transitional specifications there is. The way to stay strict in this case would be to use some javascript to open the link in a new window. That was the only standards concern, so we can move on to the next section.

Information Architecture

Information architecture is the bread and butter for SEO. To get a good idea of information architecture I turn off the style sheet. Doing so lets you see a nice hierarchical view of the site as far as information goes. If the site is well designed from an information architecture point of view, it should be organized and easy to read. This is also a good time to see the content by itself. This site starts pretty well, you get an <h1> of Grand Falls Windsor, which is the town that the site is about. I expected there to be a hyphen between the “Grand Falls” and “Windsor” because that’s how it is everywhere else. You a <ul> of navigation, pretty standard. Moving down, you get a teaser of copy, then an <h2> of “Reasons you should visit Grand Falls-Windsor”, followed by another <ul> of four reasons. Then, something very disappointing happens. Without any sort of separation from the reasons to visit Grand Falls-Windsor, there is a giant <ul> of links that have to do with different aspects of the town. I would have like to seen categories, or something to break down this large list of links. Below that there is “August 2008″ followed by all of the dates in august. I would have opted for a table in this case, because this is one situation where I would want the data represented in tabular form. After that there is “Upcoming Events” with an event underneath that, perfectly fine. “Latest News” with a news item. An “About Us” with some copy, and a “Links” section with a few links. Lastly a copyright notice. Nothing to complain about at the bottom, I sometimes wonder if “links” could be a more descriptive name in these cases, but it is very minor.

Layout and Design

Header Graphic

The first thing I notice when I arrived at this site was the large feathered image at the top. The page loads a random image/collage every time you refresh the page as well. After a few clicks on refresh I am undecided about whether I like this or not. Generally I don’t like the feather effect, and I think it goes back to looking at my high school yearbook with a feathered collage of pictures every other page. This is one of the better examples of feather I have seen though. The other comment I have about this header is the varying quality of photography. Some of the photos are interesting, high resolution (for the web), and colorful, while others are either pixelated, dreary, or just not very interesting. Another thing I noticed about this header graphic is that sometimes there is a translucent gray bar underneath the typography and other times there isn’t. I think it should always be there especially when using white text. The crest next to the type is also blurry, low quality, and doesn’t stand out like I think it should.

Navigation

I like the design and color choice of the background of the navigation bar. The pinstripes are a nice touch, what I don’t like is the cut-outs in the corners that look like they were done with a small eraser tool in Photoshop. I think I would like the cut-outs if they were a clean sharp curve. I also notice that there is no indicator of which page we are on with the menu items, clicking “HOME” also reloads the page even if you are home. The navigation is also somewhat deceiving, the only thing that changes upon click is a sub menu on the right hand side. This is somewhat odd behavior to me because I expect new content, especially from primary navigation. I noticed that this was an XHR request, so I turned off javascript to see if he was degrading gracefully, and BAM! exactly what I was initially looking for. Individual pages per navigation link, this couldn’t have made me happier. As well as there being a separate content page, we also get to know where we are. This is awesome, I would like to see similar behavior with the XHR requests, make me feel like something happened when I click a link, and tell me where I am once I do that. I think even minimally adding a header to the top of the sub menu would make me happy, telling me what the category the links are.

Calendar

I think that calendars can be very useful, if they are used. I do find the background graphic of the calendar distracting. It bothers me when something should be a bit distorted because of it is on a curved surface but isn’t, like the dates to the lower right corner. To me the graphic somewhat cheapens the calendar because of its low quality.

“Idea Garden”

There is the second feather job I have seen, and this one I don’t appreciate as much as the first one. The first thing I notice is that the white box below show be above the feathered image, not below it. The copy also doesn’t makes sense to me, it seems it should just be a contact us, like the page title says when you arrive there. This link could also fit into the primary navigation at the top, as it is a something that people come to look for. I also question the choice of the green in the link color, I don’t know where it fits in, in the color scheme.

“Reasons to visit Grand Falls-Windsor”

I think this section is pretty effective. The title is bold in color. The points have nice spacing and typography. The added detail with the unique bullet is nice.

Footer

The footer is another feathering. I am over-feathered at this point and I don’t think the translucent gray box helps at this point. The three columns isn’t bad, and I think it works here. The yellow headers are a bit much, and I don’t think they compliment the background color. White text as body copy is a tough call, it is always hard to read especially in a seriffed font, on top of an image. The email address link in the copy is unreadable to me. I think the photography feels a little forced, and I am fine with just plain text. When there is text my first concern is reading it, don’t put it on top of an image please.

Overall

I think this site is a strong, pretty effective design. I like the general color scheme, tan, red, blues, white. There is a few single instances of colors that I question, and I would like to have been something that fit a little better in the scheme, but nothing major. The typography is nice, it left me wondering what it was, and I think it fit the style of the site. The feel was classic, symmetrical, rich, with nice details. I am just noticing that I might have like to see what the menu looked like with a detail either side of the text instead of just the left. The site was also very close to being strict XHTML 1.0, with a minor change it will. I like the progressive enhancement with the javascript, without the javascript the site is still intact. I think the people of Grand-Falls Windsor will be very happy with their new site.

Further Critiques

If you want me to critique your site, leave a comment letting me know that you are interested. I will contact you and get you on the list for next time.

Historically when a piece of open source software, a framework in the case of Rails is released people get fired up about using more open source software in their everyday workflow. Some may switch to Vim or Emacs, others install Linux. This hasn’t been the same for Rails, Rails developers bought expensive Apple hardware, and picked up a commercial text editor. What gives?

Apple Hardware

Most people I know that are Rails developers work on a MacBook Pro. All of the user groups, training classes, and meet-ups I have been to people sport Apple hardware. Most also carry an iPhone (myself included, it has been totally crappy lately). I know that Apple hardware just recently started to get popular since OS X came out, but this isn’t just the normal popularizing of a new technology this is something deeper. Go to a PHP, Perl, web design, or internet users groups, and you won’t see near the saturation of Macs. There is something about the Rails way and the Apple way that goes together. I think that Rails people find Rails because they want something that is elegant, powerful, and doesn’t make you mess with the low level things you don’t want to mess with. I think people like Apple for the same reasons.

My Apple Experience

I jumped on the Apple bandwagon back in 2004 when I was going to school for photography and web design. I was using Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and Flash, and they all seem to run much more stable on the schools high powered Macs. So I bought a 17″ Powerbook, and I loved it, it was solid and I didn’t have to restart it all the time. The OS X interface was leaps and bounds better than Windows XP. Apple does something with their human interfaces that is second to none in my opinion. I now have a little MacBook that I bought in 2006, and it has been really great for the most part. The only thing that sucks about it is the discoloring of the plastic below the keyboard on either side of the touch pad, some plastic also cracked but I am hard on stuff and don’t blame Apple for that. Apple usually makes a good product and I can’t deny that.

TextMate

In the first Rails screen casts that were produced, there was a text editor that was being used that seemed amazing. Code just seemed to stream onto the screen. Snippets here, and code completion, a basic blog was finished in 15 minutes. I couldn’t believe it, I needed TextMate, I don’t know how I did anything without it. TextMate is many developer’s dream editor, there is a bundle for just about every programming language, and markup out there. A bundle has code completion, and snippets for whatever sort of developing you may be doing. The Rails bundle is very robust, and a lot of very savvy Rails developers use it. It definitely embraces the Apple/Rails style of simple yet powerful. If you think Rails and Apple go together, well consider Rails/Apple/TextMate the holy grail. The only catch is that TextMate isn’t open-source, and it isn’t free either. If you don’t have a Mac forget about it. To many that doesn’t matter, it has been starting to wear on me.

My TextMate Experience

I come from a design background, and I was very used to the IDE packages that Adobe formerly Macromedia put out, namely Dreamweaver and the Flash IDE. If you read my last post, I’ve since changed my mind about that. I started using TextMate and thought it was the be all, end all of editors. I was using the code completion, and getting a handle on snippets. It was great, until I got hired at a company that uses all PCs (except for Chris). I did manage to get Linux on my box, but TextMate was not happening. No Mac no TextMate. I am web developer, I need a text editor, and I am not going to use a different editor at work and at home. Exit TextMate.

My Open Source Experience

I have always been a fan of open-source software because it didn’t cost anything, and there was always a community that would give you a hand in getting going. I would take an open-source community over commercial customer support any day. Just today I was working on something that didn’t seem to work quite right, and I was able to hop into the IRC channel for the software I was using and work through the bug with the lead developer who maintains the software. It is hard to say the same for commercial products. With open-source software you become apart of something. You may start as a user, and then look for some help on a feature, the next thing you know you are the veteran helping out all of the new people using the software. You may even contribute to the source of the software eventually. This is the sort of thing you can never dream of doing with a commercial product unless you become an employee. Open-source developers are awesome because most of them work on a project because they love it and they believe in it, not because they are lining their pockets.

Conclusion

I think that most Rails folks choose what works for them and leave it at that. It doesn’t bother them that while Ruby is open-source and Rails is open-source, and their development platform isn’t. It didn’t bother me at first, but now it has started to bother me. The biggest issue is not being in control of how things are set up, and not knowing the system from ground up. This is my new goal, completely know my system from hardware details, to operating system, to software details. I am going to start looking for a good (non-Apple) hardware vendor. Any recommendations?

If you are a developer, designer, blogger, qa analyst, manager, or copywriter; there is one tool that you should completely own. Your text editor. I think it gets overlooked and underused. We are enticed by the wide array of “productivity” enhancing tools that have more features. There is a legion of folks who believe that something as measly as a text editor can’t handle what they need in their daily workflow. I beg to differ.

Workflow

Your editor should fit nicely into your workflow. It should be able to handle any sort of ASCII file you open in it. Whether a plain text file, Ruby, Textile, HTML, CSS, whatever, you use, it should open. A developer won’t spend much time without their favorite editor open. If you are opening a file in a programming language or markup, it should highlight it. This goes beyond actual work too, text editors are great for todo lists, taking notes, the list goes on.

Advanced Features

The key to a lot of text editors is the advanced features. Advanced features may not come easy, I still struggle to introduce a new advanced feature into my workflow but it gets there eventually. Read a manual or buy a book on your editor and learn the ins and outs. The advanced features will make your life easier, and speed up your time spent editing.

Multiple Environment Support

This is one thing that has kept me from working exclusively with TextMate (and it isn’t open source). It only supports OS X and has no plans on supporting any other environment. I respect their decision, but that simply doesn’t work for me. At home I have an Apple laptop, and at work I am on a run of the mill desktop running linux with a Windows VM (for Outlook and IE testing). I have warmed up to the open source editors Vim and Emacs. I currently use Vim, but I am interested in giving Emacs a fair chance as well. There is a flavor of both of these that will run on any widely distributed OS. Which is great because I will never have to worry about my editor not being supported by the OS.

Why not an IDE?

I don’t agree with using an IDE simply because they try to provide more than what I want. Often times they include build tools, compilers, APIs, version control, and more. I prefer to manage that outside of my editor. I understand that when you get into something new you want some of the features that do things for you, but I felt like I never truly learned that stuff because I was in an IDE. Why would you learn something when you just had to click a button and it would work for you? The other thing I don’t like about these is that by the time you have all of the side-bar, bottom-bar, top menu all showing, it leaves you a very small window to edit your text with. Boo IDEs.

Conclusion

I love text editors because they are light weight, do exactly what you expect, nothing more, nothing less, and they are rock-solid stable. If you spend any time at your computer producing code, documents, lists, or blog entries, it will be worth it to you to get awesome with your editor. There is a good chance that your editor will be around for a lot longer than the language you are working with (Vi created in 1976).

Vim
Emacs

A classic trap that I have fallen victim to is the old, “I give you the freedom to make the decision.” This really means that they don’t know enough about what you are doing to have an opinion, but when it is finished, they will tell you how they really wanted it. This is usually also means that you will be fully accountable for the route you take.

Solution #1

I think the best way to work with this situation is to go 31 flavors on them, and serve them up a baby spoonful sized portion of functionality. If they like it, continue development, if not, give them another sample size. You can make it fun too, like the little pink spoons. It doesn’t cost much to pump out the small pieces of functionality to get rapid feedback from your client. With this route they are sure to get what they want, and they become accountable for helping make the decision with you.

Trap #2 “Anthony Hopkins”

This one is like the deadfall bear trap in the move “The Edge”. Your client has just come across the most awful inspiration ever, and they want you to recreate that style or functionality. This hurts especially bad, because they are so excited about site “X” it’s exactly what they were looking for, now all you have to do is recreate it.

Solution #2

I think at this point, it is important to find out what they like about it, and why they want an exact replica. The next thing to do is to educate. If the thing that inspired them is truly horrible, criticize the elements that are horrible not the entire project. It is best to stay honest on this, or it will come back to haunt you.

Trap #3 “The Odd Couple”

In almost every facet of my life, I run into a situation where I don’t know what I want. It can be features, color palate, ice cream flavors, hairdo, should I stay or should I go. I think it happens to all of us. In terms of web development, it is a tough spot to be in when you are fulfilling a request to someone who wants something but doesn’t know quite what. Clients that aren’t web savvy will often not know what they want. Clients that are web savvy can sometimes be even worse because they know the possibilities.

Solution #3

When there is a lot of uncertainty I think it is best to keep it simple and refine the clients requirements. It is much easy to find a solution to a problem when you know what the problem is. If you and the client can’t find a problem, you are already done. With the clients that are excited about all the possibilities, tell them that it is important to start small and fulfill the base requirements. Grow with the demand.

Conclusion

These are some common scenarios that I have found myself dealing with lately. The solutions are basic, and I think your client will appreciate that. When they find out that you want to build to their requirements rather than build a bunch of stuff they don’t need I think they will be even more happy with you. Web development doesn’t always have to be complicated.

Yes. Absolutely yes. Static content is the lightest, easiest, and fastest content on the web. There was a time, when I was all about the latest and greatest in CMS technology. I have spent many a hours trudging through the bowels of Joomla, Drupal, and Mambo. Slashing the foliage of MovableType, Mephisto, Typo, and Wordpress with my machete. All because I needed the most flexible, extendible, hackable, and mashable solution to manifest my off-the-cuff projects.

Why use plain ol’ static pages?

The first reason, is that static pages “just work”. Yeah, you can make typos, mismatch markup, and break links, but even with the most abstracted CMS these issues still exist. With static pages, there is no “moving parts” so to speak.

Automation

Static content doesn’t mean you have to write out every single piece of HTML by hand. In fact, there is excellent software that you can run locally to build shared layouts, generate blog entries, and leverage dynamic templating. You run a build command and the software pumps out static pages ready to upload. You can even automate the upload/syncing process.

It’s cheap!

You can sign up for the least expensive hosting package, and that will work just fine for a very long time. It’s cheap in terms of resources too, web servers (software) are usually very light weight. Storage and bandwidth will be the only variables you have to worry about. Storage is not a problem, scaling storage is easy and relatively inexpensive. Running out of bandwidth means you are transferring a lot of data, which is usually a good problem (people are visiting your site). Maintenance is minimal, you still need to call your web guy to make edits and updates, but problems will usually be simple fixes.

SEO

Static content is ideal for SEO, the search engines see everything just as it is, plain ol’ static HTML. Search engine spiders were built with static pages in mind. The spiders can quickly and easily parse through all of your pages without a hangup. In terms of SEO, nothing beats static content.

When static pages won’t cut it

Web Applications

There are plenty of situations when static pages won’t cut it. In terms of web applications you are out of luck. Even the most simple applications use some sort of dynamic technology to exist. Every form you see uses a dynamic technology to process the information. That isn’t to say that you must say goodbye to static pages. Applications can still have a large amount of static content.

What about blog?

Blogs can be pulled off with static pages, and I am still intrigued by the idea. With a static blog, you don’t get the administrative dashboard, you don’t get plugins, and you only kind of get comments. Why am I using this database driven blog software to run this site instead of generating static content locally and syncing it up? One of the few reasons that I am, in fact, using a dynamic blog engine is because of comments. There are ways to have comments without using a database, but it wasn’t compelling enough to me. I also like the web interface that lets me publish from any computer with internet access.

Conclusion

Static pages are great because they are quick and easy to create. They are ideal for sites that showcase a company or product. Some clients might ask if they will be able to edit a page, and you will tell them no. The truth in this situation is that aside from just plain body copy, a client won’t really know how to change anything else even inside a CMS. I would prefer to save the upfront hours I would spend setting up a CMS and spend them on these minor updates and changes. Static pages stay completely usable even if you do decide that you need a little more infrastructure, you just pop them in as pages in your new CMS.

Resources

Ruby static page generators

• webgen
• webby
• nanoc